How to give your camera some extra stops of DR
 

I have just been looking at some footage I shot yesterday and I had to shoot some very high contrast scene, the bride and groom where in full sunlight and the priest and readers in full shadow. Probably most edius users already know this but in Edius you can apply a mask and just apply a effect to a part of the image, in my case the unnderexposed part.

I exposed to the brides dress when I was shooting this so her dress wouldn't clip and in post I copied the clip twice on top of the original, applied a screen overlay on both and used a mask to only apply the effect on the underexposed part, then I softened the corner to smooth the transition. This is just a rough correction and needs some fine adjusting but not to bad if I have to say so myself. :) Render time will be pretty long but it's worth the time to process. This only works well if you have a locked camera on a tripod that doesn't move.

(the faces in the image are blurred as I don't have permission to post online.)

Re: How to give your camera some extra stops of DR
 

Thanks for the tip Noa, I've just started with Edius 7 (used Premier before) and its great to pick up these user tips:-)

Re: How to give your camera some extra stops of DR
 

Cool Noa

We have gazebos here and I always try to get them to stand all inside or all outside..half in and half out means that you have half the bridal party in deep shadow and the other half in the sun!! Not a good situation.

In Sony Vegas you can also make a feathered mask over the over/under exposed sections and correct the exposure in the second track ..sounds like Edius is easier ? Do you have to also have a masked area or is it simpler than that?

Chris

Re: How to give your camera some extra stops of DR
 

In edius I also first draw a mask for the area that needs adjusting. I guess Vegas does pretty much the same. On stationary shots you can improve the overall exposure a lot but it only works well on underexposed parts so you need to consider that when exposing while you shoot, the "screen" overlay effect works very well for that purpose in Edius and you can adjust the exposure by changing the opacity on the layer you place on top of the original layer.

Re: How to give your camera some extra stops of DR
 

I use that "screen" effect a lot, just try it with duplicating the layer and placing it on top, then go to "keyers", "blend" and select "screen" and drag that onto the "mixer" part of the layer you put on top. You can open that mixer area buy using "alt" + "w" on your keyboard. Then you can finetune the exposure by changing the opacity of that layer.

Re: How to give your camera some extra stops of DR
 

Great tip! can be done in Vegas too

Re: How to give your camera some extra stops of DR
 

you can do such fake HDR picture by feeding an HDR program with same video duplicated 2 o 3 time, each having luminosity increased or decreased.
Then the program will mix the source to create a better picture.

Re: How to give your camera some extra stops of DR
 

One thing I noticed ... this effect only works on static shots. If there is movement you can't do it ... as the item being masked changes.

Re: How to give your camera some extra stops of DR
 

Davinci Resolve does a good job with tasks such as this too.

Rendering time isn't too bad with a fast computer.

Re: How to give your camera some extra stops of DR
 

you can make the mask track movement in most NLE's

Re: How to give your camera some extra stops of DR
 

Shadow/Highlight effect in Premiere gives pretty much the same result - it's not a GPU effect however so increases rendering time - if you use it then select manual settings - won't give good results on auto.

Re: How to give your camera some extra stops of DR
 

FCPX can do all this easily too - user defined masks with feathering, also option colour selection within each mask area too if you only want to target specific colour ranges. Masks can be animated and are all GPU accelerated. I've had 16 masks plus colour selections in one scene and it all still played real time and rendered faster than real time.

Learning the colour tools in FCPX saved me many hours over editing in Premiere Pro or using Resolve.

Re: How to give your camera some extra stops of DR
 

I think i've gone blind ... I can't see an option for animating masks in Vegas.

Re: How to give your camera some extra stops of DR
 

I find one of the quickest tools to lift and lower shadow levels in particular zones of an image and also correct the color in them is NewBlue's Colorfast plugin. One the plugins I use most. Great to use with S-Log 2 footage as well. It also has masking capability.

A pretty clear explanation of what it can achive can be seen here.


Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney